


Quarantine Bubble in Godric's Hollow

by Chelonie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fidelius Charms, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Quarantine Bubble, Time Travel, Veil of Death (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24251050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chelonie/pseuds/Chelonie
Summary: Sirius Black visits the Potters on October 1, 1981. Everyone knows that the Grim is a foretoken of death.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black & Harry Potter & James Potter & Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 14
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Writers_Den_Discord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writers_Den_Discord/gifts).



##  _September 1, 1971_

The first time Sirius Black put the Sorting Hat on his head, he was eleven years old. The brim of the hat fell over his eyes, and he saw himself standing in Mother’s jade parlour in front of four adults wearing old fashioned clothes.

He recognised them all. The Founders. He was facing the Founders. He bowed, the way Grandfather had taught him, and tried not to shake.

It didn’t surprise him that the man in green and silver stood and spoke first. “You could be great, Heir Black. You could be exactly what your parents wish you to be. Cunning as the serpent and ambitious-”

“No.”

“There is more,” Salazar Slytherin said.

“No. I won’t do it,” Sirius said. “I can’t be what they want. Not you.”

He expected to be cursed, but Salazar Slytherin only smiled and sat. “As you wish, Heir Black.” 

The next to stand was a terrifying Viking witch. “You have the heart to do well in my house, Heir Black. You could strengthen your loyalty, but what is more, you could learn to be kind and just.”

Years later, when he looked back on that moment, he wondered how much would have changed, if he hadn’t been eleven years old, and afraid of hearing the jeers of his classmates for landing in the house of duffers, the house of leftovers. He had been the first of the Marauders to be sorted. 

What if they had followed him there?

What if Peter Pettigrew had followed him there, and learned true loyalty?

He would never know, because he looked down at his feet and shook his head, not defiant as he was to Salazar Slytherin, but ashamed. “No, not Hufflepuff.”

To his surprise, the Viking knelt before him, took his hand, and kissed his forehead. “Remember your heart, Heir Black.” 

He blinked furiously, trying not to weep. The last person who kissed him was his Grandmother Crabbe, and she had died two years ago

The regal woman in blue then stood. “Heir Black, if you join my House, you would hone your mind.”

“I’m not smart,” Sirius said. There were echoes in his head of all the times his parents had said _Don’t be foolish, boy!_ and hit him with a stinging hex when he’d asked a question about something.

“Do not believe what others say of you,” Rowena Ravenclaw said. But she did not further argue her point.

Finally, a stout ginger man with leather armour and a sword stood and looked him up and down. “You’ll do.”

Gryffindor. His parents would kill him.

He wanted it so badly he ached with it.

“Yes please, Lord Gryffindor,” he says.

Godric Gryffindor laughed and thumped him hard on the back. “None of that ‘Lord’ nonsense. Professor if you absolutely must use a title.”

Sirius boggled. “Professor?!”

“It’s a school, isn’t it? Did you think Madam Ravenclaw was the only scholar amongst us?”

Sirius could see the logic in that immediately, though he had to revise his mental image of Godric Gryffindor being just a mindless sword swinger. “I… I see. Thank you, Professor Gryffindor.”

“GRYFFINDOR!” was shouted somewhere outside their meeting place, and the Founders faded as the Sorting Hat was lifted from Sirius’s head. 

He stared out at the Great Hall, blinking a moment at the sudden transition. He was the first lion sorted this year.

He was the first Black ever sorted into Gryffindor.

This was going to be brilliant!

* * *

##  _October 1, 1981_

Lily woke, instantly, the way parents of young children tend to do. The way people in wartime tend to do. Her wand was in her hand, and the intruder was blasted across the room before Jamie had noticed anything. He always was slower to wake.

The two approached the intruder, who was groaning and trying to get to his feet.

“Forgot what a punch you packed, Hell-flower,” the man groaned. He raised his empty hands in a sign of surrender. “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.”

Jamie lit his wand, and nearly dropped it. “Sirius?! What the fuck?”

The man in front of them was their good friend, but gaunt, hollow, shadows in his eyes, and grey in his hair. He chuckled.

“Prove you’re Sirius!” Lily demanded.

Sirius changed into a Grim, and then back into himself. They lowered their wands. 

“What happened to you?” Jamie asked.

“Nothing much. I got old, that’s all. I’m from the fuuuuture…” He waggled his fingers as he drew out the word. 

“Oh for fuck sake… you woke us up, scared us to death, all for a prank?” Lily said. “Take it downstairs, you two. I’m going back to bed.”

* * *

The next morning, she found Jamie asleep on the sofa, while Sirius fed Harry his breakfast. “Here comes the broomstick, open the shed,” Sirius said, spooning the porridge into Harry’s mouth. Harry laughed as he ate.

“Sirius, he usually feeds himself,” Lily said.

“I remember,” Sirius said. “I don’t care.” 

“Your ‘old Sirius’ look hasn’t worn off yet? Was it a potion?” Lily asked.

“Hard living,” Sirius said. “How would I prove to you that I’m really from the future?”

“Go back in time, convince eleven year old Sirius to be an honest, upstanding citizen from the time we met,” Lily said. 

“No can do. I’m not allowed to change anything,” Sirius said. He swooped another spoonful of porridge into Harry’s mouth. “Whenever I try, I just…” His mouth moved silently, but not in any recognisable way. “...well, that. It’s like my words are trying to push against the inertia of all the events of nearly fifteen years. Those things happened. Nothing I can do to un-happen them.”

“Then why are you here?” Lily asked. “If you didn’t come back to change anything?”

Sirius gave her a crooked grin. “Lils, I’m hurt. Since when do I need a reason to visit?”

Jamie stretched and sat up. “The last time you visited, you said it was so fu… er… _very_ boring being cooped up here in hiding, that we were going to die of boredom, that if we were going to lock ourselves up, we should at least have done it in a place with a Roman bath and a Quidditch pitch, that if we _had_ to come to a small cottage with no amenities, we should at least have brought that saucy nude portrait of my Great Aunt Erma…” he was ticking off reasons as he went.

“I was wrong,” Sirius said. “Utterly and completely wrong. Everything you need for happiness is right here in this room. “Isn’t that right, Harry?”

Harry, apparently growing impatient with the progress of his breakfast, stuffed a fistful of porridge into his mouth. 

* * *

“So what’s up with Sirius?” Lily asked Jamie, when Sirius was giving Harry his bath. “He’s really doubling down on this time travel thing, isn’t he?”

“I’m not sure it’s a prank, Lils,” Jamie said, scratching the back of his head. “He’s different. Calmer.”

Lily snorted. “Sirius? Calm?”

“I’m serious!”

“No, he’s Sirius.”

“Haha. That joke is _so_ hilarious. I swear I’ve never heard it before.”

“I think he might be telling the truth,” Jamie said.

Lily shook her head in scepticism, and went to check on the bath. As she expected, there was water all over the floor and magic bubbles floating around the room. What she didn’t expect was to see Harry ignoring the bubbles to coo at the tattoos moving over Sirius’s torso.

“You have tattoos,” Lily said.

“Yup,” Sirius said.

“You have a _lot_ of tattoos.”

“I always wanted a lot of tattoos. You should have heard Mother screech about them!”

“You’ve seen your mother?” Lily asked.

“Oh Merlin no, just her deranged portrait. She’s long dead where I’m from. When I’m from. Whatever. Do you like that one, pup? That’s you!” Harry was patting a shape that transformed between a whirling snitch and a boy on a broom that was flying up and down Sirius’s left arm. “I got that the summer after your third year, when I was abroad in Guadeloupe. Lovely country. I could have lived the rest of my life there. Never regretted coming back for you though, kid. Not for a hot minute. Now did I ever tell you about the time I went to Carnival and met this bird…”

“Keep it clean, Black,” Lily warned.

“Right-o, Tigerlily. She could dance like a butterfly, sing like a robin, and she was as pretty as a cherry tree in blossom. We danced all night. And since your Mum’s here, I guess that’s as far as the story will go for now. But I promise, you get to hear the dirty version when you’re older, and you will turn SO red!”

“ _Much_ older!” Lily said. “Of age, at least!”

“The next day, we met a super handsome bloke who danced with both of us,” Sirius said, winking at Lily.

“Give me my son before you corrupt him irrevocably!” Lily said, laughing. She wrapped Harry in a towel and they walked out into the hallway.

“Hey, Jamie, can I borrow some clothes? I didn’t exactly plan this side-trip.”

Jamie stared hard at Sirius, then stepped between him and his wife and child. “Sirius, why do you have an Azkaban tattoo?”

Sirius’s face froze for a moment, then he gave a forced chuckle. “Oh. That.”

* * *

They took the discussion to the kitchen, because whether muggle or magical, they had been conditioned to have difficult conversations over tea. It was the English way. 

“Let me see what I can actually say,” Sirius said. “Let me try, ‘I was framed by a Death Eater’ - Oh cool! History lets me get that out!”

“That’s bullshit!” Jamie protested. “A wand check would have cleared you!”

“There were - will be… other reasons. I won’t say the Aurory didn’t fuck up, because they did. But I looked guilty. And my name didn’t do me any favours.” Sirius said.

“Can you tell me when it happens? So I’ll know to get you out as soon as I can?” Jamie asked.

Sirius put his hand over Jamie’s. “Can’t. Sorry.”

“Aren’t you changing the past by telling us as much as you have?” Lily asked. 

Sirius took a long gulp of his tea before answering. “Naaah. It’s fine. We’re quarantined here in the Fidelius. That’s how I can get away with being here.”

“How did you even get here?” Jamie asked.

“Magic,” Sirius said.

“Gotta give that answer a Troll. Need to elaborate if you want more credit,” Lily said.

“Department of Mysteries level magic.”

Lily shook her head. “No. No way. No way on God’s green Earth would anyone make Sirius Black an Unspeakable! Not possible! I refuse to believe it!”

“Would you believe I broke into the Department?”

“That I would believe.”

“With the help of your son?”

Jamie looked down at Harry, who was polishing the floor with a stick of butter. “Er… not so much.” 

“No, Harry. No breaking and entering with your godfather. He’s a bad example,” Lily said. “Jamie, I told you we should have chosen Sturgis Podmore for his godfather.”

Sirius spluttered, and coughed tea out all over the table. 

“What’s so funny?” Lily demanded.

“It’s not,” Sirius said. “Except it is. Sturge broke into Azkaban a few months ago and got six months in the big A.”

“Uh-uh. Not Sturge,” Jamie said. “Now if you’d said Dorcas had done that, I might have believed it. You are terrible at coming up with a future history narrative. This is not your best prank, Pads.”

* * *

“So what do you guys do all day?” Sirius asked.

“I’m studying for O levels,” James said. “Lily is already taking Open University courses, the swot. She kept up with her muggle education all through Hogwarts.”

“I don’t even know what those things mean,” Sirius said.

“O levels are muggle OWLS. A levels are muggle NEWTs. Open University is a muggle University course that you can study at home. They put the lectures on the tellovision.”

“You. Studying for muggle OWLs. Pull the other one, Prongs!”

“I do too! I can probably already pass them in French, Latin, and Astronomy. But I’m also trying to learn Chemistry, Physics, and Art and Design. Then, I’ll go onto A levels.”

Sirius raised his eyebrow. He’d never realised that his best friend had been so studious in his last year of life. “What’s all that for?”

Jamie looked off to one side, fidgeted with his hands, and said, “Oh, just something to do.”

Sirius put it together himself. Ever since he’d fallen through the Veil, he’d been cleansed of his years of madness. James and Lily hadn’t known the war was about to end. They’d known their son was a target. They couldn’t live under Fidelius forever.

They planned on escaping to the muggle world. Perhaps leaving the country. Lily was probably only waiting until her pure-blood husband knew enough about muggle life to keep from giving them away.

“So what do you do when you’re not being swots?” Sirius asked. 

“Play with Harry. Keep house. I’ve started knitting,” Jamie says.

“No kidding!” 

“I’m shite at it. I made one scarf, but it looked so awful I unravelled it and Lily helped me roll the wool back in a ball. My second try at the scarf is looking a little better.”

“Is Lils still working on that damned birth sampler?” Lily had been working on a needlepoint sampler for Harry’s nursery since she was pregnant, but she had chosen a very ambitious pattern.

“Yes. Same one. She spends an hour or two on it, discovers she’s made a mistake, silences herself while she swears and picks out stitches, then puts it away insisting she’ll never touch it again. Only to pull it out when she’s bored. By the time she’s finished it, Harry’s going to be married. We’ve got some muggle games too. Scrabble, Uno, Yahtzee. They aren’t bad, especially when we play with Harry rules.”

“Harry rules?”

“Basically, he’s treated as a field hazard. He used to just make a mess, but now he’s getting old enough that he wants to actually have his own cards and tiles and tries to play.”

“Isn’t Scrabble a spelling game?” Sirius asked, vaguely remembering a set they’d had in the Gryffindor dorms.

“Yeah, you get points for making words out of your tiles,” Jamie said. “He accidentally spelled out the word ‘no’ yesterday. Or maybe not so accidentally. It is his favourite word right now.”

“Good job, Prongslet! Lily’s brains then, eh?”

* * *

The days of October passed. Sirius slept on the sofa, usually in dog form, since it was more comfortable. Harry had started climbing out of his cot on his own, and could often be found curled up with Padfoot in the morning. 

“I’d fix it if I could, kiddo,” Sirius told him. “I can’t say any of this if your parents are in earshot. I’ve tried. I’d tell them about Peter. I’d save your parents, and send them to the muggle world. I know it would mean that the war wouldn’t end, but I wouldn’t care. You’d be much happier as an anonymous muggle kid than as the Boy-Who-Lived.” 

Harry tugged at Sirius’s curls. “Want doggy.”

“You want me to be the doggy?”

“Doggy!” Harry insisted.

“I can’t fix the future, but I can be the doggy,” Sirius said. He shifted to Padfoot and licked Harry’s toes. Harry kicked and laughed, and Sirius wished that this bubble of time would never end.

* * *

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time Travel Prank: Take Ageing Potion, transfigure your clothing into some crazy future fashion, and invent a future history. Tell all your friends you've come from the future to prevent the Fire-Gnome Apocalypse.


	2. Chapter 2

##  _18 June 1996_

Sirius remembered taunting Bellatrix. It hadn’t been completely brainless - he’d seen her about to hex Harry. He’d needed her attention back on him.

That red spell of hers hit him. He didn’t know what it was, except that he could feel it deep inside. He’d need St Mungo’s, except they’d just ship him back to Azkaban and let him die of slow organ failure.

And then he went backwards through the Veil, and -

\- _discontinuity -_

He stood up in a room filled with mist. The pain from Bellatrix’s curse was gone. All of his pain, from twelve years spent in a cold prison cell, from being tortured by Dementors, from living in his own personal prison this past year - it was all gone. He felt like a new person.

He turned in a circle, holding his wand, to see the mist shape itself into the tables and benches of the Hogwarts Great Hall, all empty. When he finished his circle, the short three-legged stool was in front of him with a battered felt hat sitting on it.

With nothing better to do, he put the Sorting Hat upon his head.

It wasn’t the Founders he saw this time, but Helga Hufflepuff, sitting in his grandmother's garden. “There you are. Help me harvest the rosemary.”

“Lady Hufflepuff?”

He fell to his knees, dazed by the memories of his grandmother, returning to his mind after having been stolen by Dementors. 

“Dear heart, you look as if you’ve seen a Grim.”

Helga offered him a goblet of water, and he felt his strength returning to him. He'd always known she was terrifying. She must be a Valkyrie, a chooser of the slain.

“I really don’t understand,” he said. “Except that I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“Yes. Godric’s path was always going to be short and painful."

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Those echoes you saw as a child were on the mortal side of the Veil. They could not see clearly as we can."

“What can you see?” Sirius asked. “Can you see how it all turns out for Harry? He… he doesn’t have anyone now.”

Helga filled the goblet again and touched it with her wand. The water began to show images from the life of his godson. Sirius watched for hours with no fatigue, as the days and years of a man’s life played out for him, though sometimes his tears fell into the scrying surface.

Eventually, Sirius looked up and met her eyes. "What happens now?"

"You have choices. You could return as a ghost-"

"No." Sirius thought that sounded like prison all over again. 

"Or you could move on. But to one such as you, such as me, we have the choice to remain. You are death-touched, my Grim, and if you choose, you can become a guide to the souls of the dead."

"That. I want to do that," Sirius said.

* * *

##  _31 October 1981_

As the sun set on Halloween, Sirius felt the tug of Time, inexorable and inevitable. He  _ wasn’t  _ there on this night, so he  _ couldn’t  _ be here.

He hugged and kissed his three beloved ones goodbye, and he walked away from the cottage, in the form of a Grim. He waited in the shadows for Voldemort and the green light. Then he returned for Jamie and Lily's souls.

"You knew," Jamie said, his voice stunned rather than accusatory. The Grim nodded.

"How do we leave him?" Lily asked, looking at her son, who was miraculously alive.

The Grim opened his mouth and spoke - something he'd never been able to do as a living animagus. "Help will come."

They waited, until Hagrid had come and collected the child. Then Sirius led James and Lily into the afterlife.

* * *

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Jamie got his O levels, he was hoping to apprentice to a muggle Silversmith. It fit well with his aptitude in Transfiguration. Lily was studying for a degree in Mathematics, knowing it would be extremely versatile in many careers, including Insurance (her father's career) or computers (a field that was becoming prominent in the 80s). They believed that by the end of 1981, James would be able to pass as a muggle. Lily found someone to make new identities for them by chasing down a contact of a contact of Vernon Dursley, of all people - not that he remembers the conversation. 
> 
> The false identities for Annie and George Taylor and their son Jack remained in a muggle bank safe deposit box and were never used.

**Author's Note:**

> Join us at the Writer's Den Discord, a friendly chat of writers, readers, betas and friends. <https://discord.gg/G77FbMT>


End file.
